Worse Games To Play
by HauntedSilver
Summary: Counterpart oneshot. Belle ponders over things in her mental hospital prison, including the possibility of a past life.


Worse Games To Play

**A/N:This has been rotating around my head for a while, and since I finally got around to getting a Fanfiction acount, of course I had to make a Rumbelle story**. **And because Belle is -at the very least- mentally unstable, the story is rather vague and does drop off at seemingly random points.**

They called her something here, but she could never remember it because she was so sure it wasn't the right one. The correct name was just on the tip of her tongue, on the verge of popping into her brain: yet no amount of hinting could bring it back to her.

She was curled up in a ball on her side, the way she usually slept. Her pillow was okay, and the blanket was warm -although not comforting- against the cold walls of her cell. She was up on the ledge, her favourite place to be. Mostly because she was safe from all of the vivid illusions that writhed on the floor; partly because it was a convenient place to sit and sleep; and also because she could look out her window, where dragons and her past lives roamed free. At least, she thought they were her past lives. They looked like her. And yet she had the strangest feeling that she shouldn't have more than one.

Her cell started filling up with water, lapping the edge of her ledge. She wanted to scream. To build up this great horrible, panicked shriek and release years of madness and fear. But she hadn't uttered a word in three years. Or so. Three years sounded about right, but she could never be sure. She slept when she was tired and woke without knowing if she'd slept for hours or days.

The water lowered a little, a melancholy melody started from a piano somewhere, and one of her past lives screamed. A flute joined the haunted melody the piano had started. She leaned back on the wall, listening more intently. There was something about the flute that was familiar to her. Maybe before she'd been brought here -which she had no recollection of at all- she had played it. Maybe it had been her favourite instrument.

The water leaked out from her cell and was replaced by a spinning wheel. It sat in the corner, looking out of place but terribly, irrevocably, naggingly familiar. The sounds of the piano and flute faded, replaced by the wheel's creaks. It was a comforting sound, really. One that she felt had been in the background of a past life so long it was scarcely noticed.

A purple goblin blossomed to life on the floor, starting towards her. She closed her eyes, patiently waiting for the hallucination to disappear.

In the darkness of her eyelids, two dark eyes bloomed. They were always there, whenever she shut her eyes. The one illusion that never faded.

She could see the very embodiment of herself in those obsidian eyes: haunted and lonely just like her. But they held a humour and lilt and an odd unhingedness that startled her. She felt like she should be scared of them. Yet, she found herself drawn to their inky depths. Reaching out for something she knew was gone, like a blown-out candle or lost hallucination.

She stayed there, eyes closed, curled up. It felt as though she was waiting for something, though she couldn't be sure what.

Sometimes she would play games with her own demented head. Attempts at her past lives, or her life before this. Did she like lemons? Was pink her favourite colour? She never had an answer really, only odd vacancy.

But the most common game to play was names. She'd guess at what her name might of been. She would try to remember what they called her. She'd even try to think of names that might fit her, or have belonged to the one past life she was sure of.

Margie?

No, she felt a strange repulsion to the name. Not like or dislike, just a feeling of being pushed away from it.

Verna?

That wasn't quite right either. She supposed that if she knew her likes, she would think that was a lovely name. Maybe. Or maybe she would hate it.

"Belle?"

**Yeah. I do have more written, but I got stuck and so it would have had a weird ending. Besides, I kind of like that this ends so vaguely.**


End file.
